RSS
AP Article Completely Distorts the Connection Between Black Americans and Palestinians
Family members, friends, and supporters of Israelis and other nationalities who were taken hostage on Oct. 7 by Hamas terrorists during a deadly attack march after they began a few days march towards Jerusalem, in Latrun, Israel, Nov. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
A global influence campaign linked to Russia uses spoofed versions of legitimate news websites to misinform the public about the war between Hamas and Israel.
According to a report in Haaretz, this “Doppelgänger campaign” spreads disinformation using “replicas of websites of respected legacy media outlets across the world,” including the French newspapers Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Le Parisien; Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt and Bild in Germany; the Israeli sites Mako and Liberal in Hebrew; and the English-language Jewish Journal, a prominent Jewish American outlet.
The Dec. 17 Associated Press article, “Black American solidarity with Palestinians is rising and testing longstanding ties to Jewish allies,” left this CAMERA researcher wondering whether the storied AP had also fallen victim to the Doppelgänger campaign.
But a careful examination of the link, along with the fact that the article appears on the Lexis-Nexis news database, confirms that the piece’s provenance is authentically the AP. The piece’s reporting, on the other hand, is as detached as could be from AP’s vaunted journalistic standards. Inverting the Doppelgänger campaign, this real AP story masquerades as fake news.
Indeed, a second CAMERA researcher reacted after reading the piece: “Is this an Op-Ed? Does AP publish Op-Eds? Because it reads like one. A really terrible one.”
Intent on shoehorning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre) into the struggle of Black Americans against racism, it’s no wonder that AP video journalist Noreen Nasir and race and ethnicity editor Aaron Morrison ignore the shocking video of the final terrifying moments of the life of Joshua Mollel.
Mollel was a Black, Tanzanian agricultural intern who came to Israel in September to study farming. Hamas terrorists brutally murdered him, gleefully capturing the barbaric attack on video, and kidnapped his mutilated body to the Gaza Strip. (Warning: the difficult, very graphic video of Mollel’s murder is available here.)
Mollel was not Hamas’ only Tanzanian victim. Clemence Felix Mtenga, also a cohort in the agricultural internship, was also murdered by Hamas.
The video showing a Black man brutally slaughtered for the crime of studying in Israel fails to conform to the baseless narrative promoted by those who “see the Palestinian struggle in the West Bank and Gaza reflected in their own fight for racial equality and civil rights” — a narrative that the AP writers platform without challenge. Freely editorializing as if they are op-ed as opposed to news writers, Nasir and Morrison continue: “The recent rise of protest movements against police brutality in the U.S., where structural racism plagues nearly every facet of life, has connected Black and Palestinian activists under a common cause.”
But what common cause does Palestinian brutality, which did not spare the life of even non-Israeli Africans, have with Black Americans’ fight for racial equality and civil rights?
Indeed, the insistence on molding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into the image of the American civil rights movement is a known ploy of anti-Israel activism, falsely casting Israelis as white oppressors.
As Einat Wilf wrote in Sapir Journal in 2021 (“How Not to Think About the Conflict“):
And so, in an act of blatant neocolonialism, the American story is viewed as the universal prism through which all societies should be understood and analyzed. Blithely ignorant of the specificity of their own experience, the neocolonialists fit the square peg of the conflict into the round hole of American history. Jews are bizarrely cast as “white,” and Zionism as a movement of “white supremacy,” while Arabs, who look exactly like Jews (Fauda, anyone?), are cast as “people of color.” The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is cast as a mirror of race relations in America, but without the relevant local context of slavery, Jim Crow, or any of the specificities of Jewish, Arab, or Middle Eastern history.
The AP writers depict the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the Middle Eastern version of the American civil rights movement through the eyes of Cydney Wallace. The AP reports that the Black Jewish activist recently returned from a West Bank trip that reinforced her view that Palestinians are fighting the same civil rights battle as Black Americans. “Back home in Chicago, Wallace has navigated speaking about her support for Palestinians while maintaining her Jewish identity and standing against antisemitism. She says she doesn’t see those things as mutually exclusive,” recount Nasir and Morrison.
The AP gives no indication that Cydney Wallace’s Jewish identity is anything but mainstream. In fact, she is very much on the fringes of the widest definition of what constitutes Jewish community.
Wallace is a member of Beth Shalom B’Nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, which serves the Black Israelite community and does not represent the mainstream Jewish community including Black Jews who adhere to American Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform Judaism. While Judaism recognizes as Jewish those born within the Jewish community, or converted to Judaism under the auspices of recognized rabbinic authorities, the Black Israelite community is based on self-identification.
An in-depth Anti-Defamation League backgrounder on the very diverse Black Hebrew Israelites community explains: “The Black Hebrew Israelite (BHI) movement is a fringe religious movement that rejects widely accepted definitions of Judaism and asserts that people of color are the true children of Israel.”
Nevertheless, the AP simply ignores Wallace’s noteworthy affiliation, falsely casting her religious identity as mainstream Judaism.
Exploiting Wallace’s “Jewish identity” without disclosing the atypical nature of that identity, the lengthy article ostensibly explores the dynamics between antisemitism, the Black experience in America, and the supposed intersectionality with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In doing so, the AP writers entirely ignore antisemitism within the Palestinian population. Indeed, a 2014 global survey carried out by the Anti-Defamation League found that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are among the world’s top antisemitic “hot spots,” with 93 percent of the population harboring antisemitic views.
Sky-high Palestinian antisemitism, just like Hamas’ brutal murder of Tanzanians, belie the tale of Palestinians as the Middle Eastern equivalent of oppressed Black Americans. The same dynamic is at play as the journalists blandly downplay Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities as “the unprecedented Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas militants.”
In exactly what way was the Hamas attacks were unprecedented — was it the “historic win for the Palestinian resistance,” as anti-Israel campus groups put it, or the sheer number of civilian victims; the deliberate targeting of children, women, and elderly; the widespread rape, torture, mutilation, beheadings, burning alive, murder of children in front of parents and vice versa; the kidnapping of hundreds of Israelis and foreigners, including children and even a nine-month-old baby?
Nasir and Morr don’t say. By contrast, regarding “Israel’s ensuing bombardment of the Gaza Strip,” the duo suddenly locate “shocking images of destruction and death.” It is as if, through the authors’ eyes, there were no shocking images of destruction and death from Hamas’ attacks on Israel.
Indeed, Nasir and Morrison simply can’t shake the compulsion to withhold adjectives when it comes to the Hamas atrocities, even as they extend adjectives highlighting the severity of Israel’s response. In this vein, they persist: “None of the members of [Wallace’s] ‘Black Jerusalem’ trip anticipated it would come to a tragic end with the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in which some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 taken hostage. Since then, more than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s blistering air and ground campaign in Gaza, now in its third month.” [Emphasis added.]
The pattern downplaying Palestinian violence manifests again with respect to the hostages and Palestinian prisoners released in prisoner exchanges. The AP reports:
During a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas as part of the recent deal to free dozens of hostages seized by Hamas militants, Israel released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Many were teenagers who had recently been picked up in the West Bank for minor offenses like stone-throwing and had not been charged.
Strikingly, the reporters take care to note that many of the released Palestinian prisoners were teenagers held for “minor offenses” and were not charged. (Unmentioned are the released Palestinian prisoners convicted of attempted murder, and others charged with stabbings. In addition, the “minor” offense of stone-throwing has been known to kill and seriously injure.)
In contrast, the partisan pair provide zero details about any of the 105 released hostages of all ages — from toddlers to octagarians — whose only crime was to be Israeli (whether Jewish or Arab) or associating with Israelis (as in the case of the Tanzanian students, along with dozens of Thai and Nepali workers). Almost all of the Israeli hostages released so far have been elderly women, mothers, and children. They are guilty of no offenses and “had not been charged.”
Silence on Black Antisemitism
Palestinian antisemitism is not the only anti-Jewish bigotry which gets a pass. “The 39-year-old said she had plenty to focus on at home, where she frequently gives talks on addressing anti-Black sentiment in the American Jewish community and dismantling white supremacy in the U.S.,” the AP duo report about Wallace.
But they gloss over existing anti-Jewish sentiment in certain pockets within the Black community, including within elements of the Black Hebrew Israel movement, while expanding on Black support for Palestinians:
From Black American groups that denounced the U.S. backing of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory to Black protesters demonstrating for the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, some Jewish Americans are concerned that support could escalate the threat of antisemitism and weaken Jewish-Black ties fortified during the Civil Rights Movement.
The journalists also under-report the grotesque antisemitism embedded in Black Lives Matter movement, stating:
In 2016, when BLM activists formed the coalition known as the Movement for Black Lives, they included support for Palestinians in a platform called the “Vision for Black Lives.” A handful of Jewish groups, which had largely been supportive of the BLM movement, denounced the Black activists’ characterization of Israel as a purportedly “apartheid state” that engages in “discrimination against the Palestinian people.”
But the Movement for Black Lives did not stop at false apartheid charges; it also accused Israel of genocide, which, according to the widely-accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, constitutes antisemism. As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander previously reported: “One section, headlined ‘Invest-Divest,’ accused the US, through its alignment with Israel, of complicity in what the authors called the ‘genocide that is taking place against the Palestinian people’ and Israeli ‘apartheid.’”
Other BLM manifestations of antisemitism include at least one documented riot organized by a BLM leader in Los Angeles targeting a historic Jewish neighborhood.
And, as our colleagues at CAMERA UK have noted, “BLM groups in Los Angeles, Chicago and DC issued statements . . . literally supporting Hamas’s barbarism. BLM Chicago tweeted an image of a Hamas paraglider with a Palestinian flag attached to his parachute and the caption ‘I stand with Palestine’ before evidentially deleting the tweet following criticism.”
The far left are showing their true colors. Here Black Lives Matter Chicago are celebrating the butchers who arrived on paragliders at a music festival and brutalized and murdered hundreds of defenseless young people at a music festival. Difficult to comprehend. pic.twitter.com/lduVCnzgdj
— Eoghan McCabe (@eoghan) October 10, 2023
Critically, some Black Hebrew Israelites completely reject Wallace’s notion that the Palestinian experience is analogous to the Black American experience, and argue that Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre underscores the commonalities between the Jewish and Black stories. But AP, which boasts that it seeks to “expand the reach of factual reporting,” silenced voices and facts which contradict its predetermined narrative.
A message from this Hebrew Israelite to the Black and LGBTQ communities. #MustWatch pic.twitter.com/dl0gJ1BfK8
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) December 18, 2023
The AP’s effort to pass off the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the Middle Eastern doppelgänger of the civil rights movement, with the Palestinians playing the part of Black Americans battling against racism, is nothing short of a parody of journalism. In short, it’s a real news outlet playing at fake news.
With research by Adam Levick.
Tamar Sternthal is the director of CAMERA’s Israel Office. A version of this article previously appeared on the CAMERA website. See also “Black Lives Matter, JVP’s Deadly Exchange, and Israel” and “The BLM Movement and Antisemitism“
The post AP Article Completely Distorts the Connection Between Black Americans and Palestinians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Jewish Synagogue, Holocaust Memorial Vandalized in Poland After Politician Denies Holocaust
An antisemitic slur spray-painted on the ruins of a former synagogue in Dukla, Poland. Photo: World Jewish Restitution Organization
Two Jewish sites in Dukla, Poland, were vandalized over the weekend mere days after Polish member of the European Parliament (MEP) Grzegorz Braun claimed gas chambers at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were fake and repeated an antisemitic blood libel in a live radio interview.
Vandals spray-painted the word “F–k” followed by a Star of David on the ruins of a former synagogue that was destroyed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and a memorial commemorating Holocaust victims located at the entrance of the Jewish cemetery in Dukla was defaced with a swastika and the word “Palestine,” according to the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO). The memorial honors Jews of Dukla and the surrounding areas who were murdered by Nazis during the Holocaust.
The two Jewish sites in Dukla are cared for by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ), which was established in 2002 by the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland and the WJRO to protect and commemorate Poland’s Jewish heritage sites.
“These hateful acts are not only antisemitic, but they are also attempts to erase Jewish history and desecrate memory,” said WJRO President Gideon Taylor in a released statement on Tuesday. “Polish authorities must take swift and serious action to identify the perpetrators and ensure the protection of Jewish heritage sites in Dukla and across the country.”
“The vandalism of Jewish sites in Dukla—with swastikas and anti-Israel slurs—is not an isolated act,” insisted Jack Simony, director general of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF), in a statement to The Algemeiner. The nonprofit focuses on preserving the memory of the Jewish community in Oświęcim (Auschwitz) and maintains the Auschwitz Jewish Center, the last remaining synagogue in town.
“While we cannot say definitively that it [the vandalism] was sparked by Grzegorz Braun’s Holocaust denial, his rhetoric contributes to an atmosphere where hatred is emboldened and truth is under assault,” added Simony. “Braun’s lies are not harmless — they are dangerous. Holocaust denial fuels antisemitism and, too often, violence. This is why Holocaust education matters … because when we fail to confront lies, we invite their consequences. Memory must be defended, not only for the sake of the past, but for the safety of our future.”
On July 10, a ceremony was held commemorating the 84th anniversary of the 1941 Jedwabne massacre, when hundreds of Polish Jews were massacred – mostly by their neighbors – in the northeastern town in German-occupied Poland. The ceremony was attended by dignitaries and faith leaders including Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich and Israeli Deputy Ambassador Bosmat Baruch. Groups of anti-Israel and far-right activists — including MEP Braun and his supporters – tried to disrupt the event by holding banners with antisemitic slogans and blocking the vehicles of the attendees, according to Polish radio.
Hours later, during a live radio broadcast, Braun falsely claimed the Auschwitz gas chambers were “a lie” and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum was promoting “pseudo-history.” He also claimed that Jewish “ritual murder is a fact.” Polish prosecutors launched an investigation into Braun’s comments, they announced that same day. Under Article 55 of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Holocaust denial is a criminal offense in Poland.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum issued a swift condemnation of Braun’s remarks and said it intents to pursue legal action. The Institute of National Remembrance — which is the largest research, educational and archival institution in Poland – also denounced Braun’s remarks, saying there is “well-documented” evidence supporting the existence of gas chambers. His comments were also condemned by the Embassy of Israel in Poland, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and the US Embassy in Warsaw, which said that his actions “distort history, desecrate memory, or spread antisemitism.” AJCF called on the European Parliament to consider disciplinary measures against Braun, including potential censure or expulsion.
Auschwitz Jewish Center Director Tomek Kuncewicz said Braun’s comments are “an act of violence against truth, against survivors, and against the legacy of our shared humanity.” AJCF Chairman Simon Bergson called the politician’s remarks “blatant and baseless lies,” while Simony described them as “a calculated act of antisemitic incitement” that “must be met with legal consequences and universal moral condemnation.”
The post Jewish Synagogue, Holocaust Memorial Vandalized in Poland After Politician Denies Holocaust first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Coalition of 400 Jewish Orgs and Synagogues Urge Teachers Union to Reverse Decision Cutting Ties with ADL
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. Photo Credit: ADL.
Following a vote by the National Education Association (NEA) on July 6 to end its relationship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 400 Jewish communal groups, education organizations, and religious institutions have come together to call for the influential teachers union to change course.
“We are writing to express our deep concerns about the growing level of antisemitic activity within teachers’ unions, particularly since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023,” the letter to NEA President Becky Pringle stated. “Passage of New Business Item (NBI) 39 at the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly this past weekend, which shockingly calls for the boycott of the Anti-Defamation League, is just the latest example of open hostility toward Jewish educators, students and families coming from national and local teachers’ unions and their members.”
In addition to the ADL, signatories of the letter included American Jewish Committee (AJC), Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jewish Federations of North America, #EndJewHatred, American Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith International, CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting & Analysis), Combat Antisemitism Movement, Democratic Majority for Israel, StandWithUs, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Zioness Movement, and Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).
The group told Pringle that “we have heard directly from NEA members who have shared their experiences ranging from explicit and implicit antisemitism within the union to a broader pattern of insensitivity toward legitimate concerns of Jewish members – including at the recently concluded Representative Assembly. We are also deeply troubled by a broader pattern of union activity over the past 20 months that has targeted or alienated Jewish members and the wider Jewish community.”
The letter to Pringle included an addendum providing examples of objectionable rhetoric. These named such incidents as the Oakland Education Association (OEA) putting out a statement calling for “an end to the occupation of Palestine” and the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) accusing Israel of genocide.
The coalition of 400 organizations urged the NEA to “take immediate action” and suggested such steps as rejecting NBI 39, issuing a “strong condemnation” of antisemitism within the union, drafting a plan to counter ongoing antisemitism in affiliate chapters, and opposing “any effort to use an educator’s support for the existence of Israel as a means to attack their identity.”
ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on X that “Excluding @ADL’s educational resources from schools is not just an attack on our org, but on the entire Jewish community. We urge the @NEAToday Executive Committee to reverse this biased, fringe effort and reaffirm its commitment to supporting all Jewish students and educators.”
The post Coalition of 400 Jewish Orgs and Synagogues Urge Teachers Union to Reverse Decision Cutting Ties with ADL first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Zohran Mamdani Won’t Condemn Calls for Violence Against Jews; Why Are Jewish Leaders Supporting Him?
Zohran Mamdani. Photo: Ron Adar / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s surge in New York City politics, a disturbing trend has emerged: prominent Jewish leaders are being urged to join “Jews for Zohran,” a newly formed effort to legitimize a candidate whose record and rhetoric are alarmingly out of step with Jewish communal values.
In a city that’s home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel — and where antisemitic incidents are on the rise — this is a profound mistake.
Mamdani has refused to explicitly condemn the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” which has been widely understood as a call to violence against Jews. His defenders insist it’s a symbolic plea for Palestinian rights. But nuance offers little comfort when the phrase glorifies violent uprisings, and is routinely chanted alongside calls for Israel’s destruction.
Institutions such as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and watchdogs like StopAntisemitism.org have made it clear: attempts to sanitize violent language must be firmly rejected.
Mamdani’s vocal support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is equally troubling. BDS does not merely critique Israeli policy; it seeks to economically isolate and politically delegitimize the Jewish state. When a candidate stands against the most visible symbol of Jewish survival — Israel — while brushing off violent slogans as misunderstood metaphors, we must ask what message this sends to our communities.
The answer should be clear. Jewish New Yorkers were the targets of over half the city’s reported hate crimes last year. From Crown Heights to Midtown, visible Jews have been harassed, assaulted, and mocked. Mamdani was flagged by national antisemitism monitors in December for promoting material that mocked Hanukkah. This is not abstract. This is personal, present, and dangerous.
Yes, Mamdani has pledged to increase hate crime funding from $3 million to $26 million. But that’s not enough. The Jewish community — especially now — needs more than budgetary gestures. We require moral clarity, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel powerfully stated: “Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself….”
Moral clarity demands more than financial promises, it requires principled rejection of rhetoric that endangers Jews. Belonging isn’t forged by slogans; it’s proven through sustained empathy, shared responsibility, and unwavering commitment to safety.
Calls for Jewish leaders to publicly support Mamdani, including those made to officials like Brad Lander and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), aim to provide political cover for a candidate whose worldview clashes with core Jewish values. These aren’t harmless endorsements. They’re symbols. And symbols matter.
Endorsing Mamdani sends a troubling signal: that political convenience or progressive branding outweighs communal safety and historical memory. When Jewish leaders align with someone who flirts with the delegitimization of Jewish statehood and refuses to condemn slogans rooted in violence, they are telling our adversaries that our moral lines are negotiable.
New York’s Jewish community has long been a moral compass in American politics. What happens here echoes across the nation. If our leaders can be cajoled into supporting a candidate like Mamdani, what message does that send to Jews in swing districts, smaller cities, and across college campuses? It normalizes equivocation. It emboldens the fringe. It tells the next generation that Jewish dignity is up for debate.
This is about more than Mamdani. It’s about whether Jewish pride and Jewish safety remain non-negotiable pillars of our political participation. Some have argued that this is simply politics as usual — that strategic alliances are part of coalition-building. But the Jewish people know better than most that what begins as a small compromise can metastasize into a much greater danger.
Former Democratic Councilman Rory Lancman said it best: “If ever there was a time to put principle over party, this is it.” He’s right. And that’s why this moment requires Jewish leaders to speak not just as political actors, but as moral stewards.
Jewish leaders are free to engage with any candidate they choose. But engagement is not endorsement. One can listen, challenge, and debate without aligning oneself publicly with a candidate whose positions cross communal red lines. Outreach does not require complicity.
If Jewish political figures join “Jews for Zohran,” they risk helping mainstream dangerous ideologies. They risk fracturing communal unity even further at a time when Jewish communal unity is our best defense. They risk allowing today’s ambiguity to become tomorrow’s regret.
Jewish history teaches us the cost of silence, of appeasement, and of looking away. We cannot afford those mistakes again — not in this city, not in this era; history is beginning to repeat itself and we cannot allow that to happen.
To every Jewish leader now weighing their public stance: choose principle. Choose safety. Choose the kind of moral leadership our tradition demands; reject the logic of “Jews for Zohran.” The stakes are too high — and the message matters.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
The post Zohran Mamdani Won’t Condemn Calls for Violence Against Jews; Why Are Jewish Leaders Supporting Him? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.